Futuristic designs give disabled athletes more sporting options

By Matthew Knight, CNN

Updated 9:47 AM ET, Thu March 8, 2012

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Paralympic innovations - Headshot – Students in London have designed some novel solutions to improve sports participation for disabled athletes. This prototype is called "Headshot" and lets severely disabled athletes compete with the able-bodied in clay-pigeon shooting. Aiming and firing is controlled by a specially designed headset.

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Ghost – British parathlete Iain Dawson (right) tries out the "Ghost," which has been designed to help athletes train better. Vibrations and sound alert the wearer when a specific movement has been achieved. Students think it could help visually-impaired athletes like Dawson hone a swimming stroke. The idea was awarded £5,000 ($8,000) by exhibition sponsor Rio Tinto.

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Cannonball – Some of the students thought about team sports which might form part of the program at Paralympics far in the future. "Cannonball" is a "fast and furious wheelchair team sport."

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Rainbow Touch – Other ideas were simpler, but just as interesting. "Rainbow Touch" uses patterns of texture and color to create team vests which are easily identifiable to teammates.

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Mind Surfer – Using nanobots to control waves of sand, "Mind Surfer" is an idea to create a new desert sport.

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Photos:Paralympic innovations

Brainsled – "Brainsled" is another idea which allows the disabled and able-bodied to compete against each other. Competitors would use brainwaves to control the bobsleigh testing powers of concentration and skill on a level playing field.

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Endura – "Endura" is a knee socket for a prosthetic limb which could provide a more flexible fit for athletes during competition.

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Story highlights

New design exhibition imagines new sports for future Paralympics

Eleven ideas for new sports and training equipment devised by UK students

The goal was to create a much more even playing field for athletes of different levels of ability, says David Keech, a tutor on the Innovation Design Engineering postgraduate course

"When we started the project we said to the students: 'It can't be Marvel (comics), it can't be Quidditch (a game in the Harry Potter films), but it has to have something of that in there.' It's all about imagination, and for the students here, that is their currency," Keech, a course tutor at Imperial College, told CNN.

"Headshot" -- a new take on clay-pigeon shooting for both the able-bodied and disabled -- is a good example.

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Competitors don a special headset which translates head movements (up, down and side to side) into movements on a powered platform below. Firing the gun is activated by blowing into a sensor on the headset.

"It maintains the physicality of the sport and the man/machine connection," says co-designer Jeff Gough.

"There is a strong sense of thrill as the gun is mounted on the body. We played with a few different ideas but we wanted to mimic the fine motor skills involved in shooting."

Another prototype, "Brainsled," utilizes existing gaming headgear to let athletes steer a bobsled by the power of thought, allowing able-bodied and disabled athletes to pit their reflexes and powers of concentration against each other.

The challenge has been sponsored by Rio Tinto (provider of the metal for medals at London Olympics and Paralympics) which awarded a £5,000 ($8,000) development prize to the most promising design.

That honor went to "Ghost," a haptic device mounted on the wrist and elbow which uses sounds and vibrations to tell the wearer when they are performing a particular motion correctly.

The students imagine it helping to hone a swimming stroke, and Keech thinks it has "wonderful possibilities."

Iain Dawson, a visually-impaired parathlete who advised the students on the four-week project, was impressed with their efforts.

"It's not an easy thing to make work in such a short space of time, but it has a wide application and it's exactly what we talked about," he said.

Dawson, a former world and European paratriathlon champion who suffers from X-rated retinoschisis, also praised "Rainbow Touch" -- an idea which uses panels of color and textures on sports clothing to help visually-impaired athletes identify teammates.

Other stars of disabled sports were also on hand during the task including British Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson (winner of 11 gold medals) and javelin thrower Scott Moorhouse, who helped out with a new adjustable knee socket for a prosthetic leg.

"It was really a meeting of minds," Keech said. "The best design students in the world meeting the best athletes in the world."

Other designs peered a little further into the future.

"Mind Surfer" imagines waves created by "self-replicating nanobots" and "Sky Ball" imagines athletes wearing prosthetic wings, while "Cannonball" is the name given to "a fast and furious wheelchair team sport."